This has some mention of signed applets et al, so I thought it was applicable. -Allen From: IN%"rre@weber.ucsd.edu" 11-MAY-1996 23:06:27.24 From: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help@weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 15:59:13 -0400 (EDT) From: "Home Page Press, Inc." <staff@hpp.com> To: staff@hpp.com Subject: JAVA BLACK WIDOWS - SUN DECLARES WAR JAVA BLACK WIDOWS - SUN DECLARES WAR Sun Microsystems' has declared war on Black Widow Java applets on the Web. This is the message from Sun in response to an extensive Online Business Consultant (OBC/May 96) investigation into Java security. OBC's investigation and report was prompted after renowned academics, scientists and hackers announced Java applets downloaded from the WWW presented grave security risks for users. Java Black Widow applets are hostile, malicious traps set by cyberthugs out to snare surfing prey, using Java as their technology. OBC received a deluge of letters asking for facts after OBC announced a group of scientists from Princeton University, Drew Dean, Edward Felten and Dan Wallach, published a paper declaring "The Java system in its current form cannot easily be made secure." The paper can be retrieved at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/pub/secure96.html. Further probing by OBC found that innocent surfers on the Web who download Java applets into Netscape's Navigator and Sun's HotJava browser, risk having "hostile" applets interfere with their computers (consuming RAM and CPU cycles). It was also discovered applets could connect to a third party on the Internet and, without the PC owner's knowledge, upload sensitive information from the user's computer. Even the most sophisticated firewalls can be penetrated . . . "because the attack is launched from behind the firewall," said the Princeton scientists. One reader said, "I had no idea that it was possible to stumble on Web sites that could launch an attack on a browser." Another said, "If this is allowed to get out of hand it will drive people away from the Web. Sun must allay fears." The response to the Home Page Press hostile applet survey led to the analogy of Black Widow; that the Web was a dangerous place where "black widows" lurked to snare innocent surfers. As a result the Princeton group and OBC recommended users should "switch off" Java support in their Netscape Navigator browsers. OBC felt that Sun and Netscape had still to come clean on the security issues. But according to Netscape's Product Manager, Platform, Steve Thomas, "Netscape wishes to make it clear that all known security problems with the Navigator Java and JavaScript environment are fixed in Navigator version 2.02." However, to date, Netscape has not answered OBC's direct questions regarding a patch for its earlier versions of Navigator that supported Java . . . the equivalent of a product recall in the 3D world. Netscape admits that flaws in its browsers from version 2.00 upwards were related to the Java security problems, but these browsers are still in use and can be bought from stores such as CompUSA and Cosco. A floor manager at CompUSA, who asked not to be named, said "its news to him that we are selling defective software. The Navigator walks off our floor at $34 a pop." OBC advised Netscape the defective software was still selling at software outlets around the world and asked Netscape what action was going to be taken in this regard. Netscape has come under fire recently for its policy of not releasing patches to software defects; but rather forcing users to download new versions. Users report this task to be a huge waste of time and resources because each download consists of several Mbytes. As such defective Navigators don't get patched. OBC also interviewed Sun's JavaSoft security guru, Ms. Marianne Mueller, who said "we are taking security very seriously and working on it very hard." Mueller said the tenet that Java had to be re-written from scratch or scrapped "is an oversimplification of the challenge of running executable content safely on the web. Security is hard and subtle, and trying to build a secure "sandbox" [paradigm] for running untrusted downloaded applets on the web is hard." Ms. Mueller says Sun, together with their JavaSoft (Sun's Java division) partners, have proposed a "sandbox model" for security in which "we define a set of policies that restrict what applets can and cannot do---these are the boundaries of the sandbox. We implement boundary checks---when an applet tries to cross the boundary, we check whether or not it's allowed to. If it's allowed to, then the applet is allowed on its way. If not, the system throws a security exception. "The 'deciding whether or not to allow the boundary to be crossed' is the research area that I believe the Princeton people are working on," said Mueller. "One way to allow applets additional flexibility is if the applet is signed (for example, has a digital signature so that the identity of the applet's distributor can be verified via a Certificate Authority) then allow the applet more flexibility. "There are two approaches: One approach is to let the signed applet do anything. A second approach is to do something more complex and more subtle, and only allow the applet particular specified capabilities. Expressing and granting capabilities can be done in a variety of ways. "Denial of service is traditionally considered one of the hardest security problems, from a practical point of view. As [Java's creator] James Gosling says, it's hard to tell the difference between an MPEG decompressor and a hostile applet that consumes too many resources! But recognizing the difficulty of the problem is not the same as 'passing the buck.' We are working on ways to better monitor and control the use (or abuse) of resources by Java classes. We could try to enforce some resource limits, for example. These are things we are investigating. "In addition, we could put mechanisms in place so that user interface people (like people who do Web browsers) could add 'applet monitors' so that browser users could at least see what is running in their browser, and kill off stray applets. This kind of user interface friendliness (letting a user kill of an applet) is only useful if the applet hasn't already grabbed all the resources, of course." The experts don't believe that the problem of black widows and hostile applets is going to go away in a hurry. In fact it may get worse. The hackers believe that when Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 3.00 with support for Java, Visual Basic scripting and the added power of its ActiveX technology, the security problem will become worse. "There is opportunity for abuse, and it will become an enormous problem," said Stephen Cobb, Director of Special Projects for the National Computer Security Association (NCSA). "For example, OLE technology from Microsoft [ActiveX] has even deeper access to a computer than Java does." JavaSoft's security guru Mueller agreed on the abuse issue: "It's going to be a process of education for people to understand the difference between a rude applet, and a serious security bug, and a theoretical security bug, and an inconsequential security-related bug. In the case of hostile applets, people will learn about nasty/rude applet pages, and those pages won't be visited. I understand that new users of the Web often feel they don't know where they're going when they point and click, but people do get a good feel for how it works, pretty quickly, and I actually think most users of the Web can deal with the knowledge that not every page on the web is necessarily one they'd want to visit. Security on the web in some sense isn't all that different from security in ordinary life. At some level, common sense does come into play. "Many people feel that Java is a good tool for building more secure applications. I like to say that Java raises the bar for security on the Internet. We're trying to do something that is not necessarily easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying to do. In fact it may be worth trying to do because it isn't easy. People are interested in seeing the software industry evolve towards more robust software---that's the feedback I get from folks on the Net." # # # The report above may be reprinted with credit provided as follows: Home Page Press, Inc., http://www.hpp.com and Online Business Consultant™ Please refer to the HPP Web site for additional information about Java and OBC. =========================================================== ............Home Page Press, Inc. http://www.hpp.com home of Go.Fetch™ ........Free TEXT version - Online Business Today email: obt.text@hpp.com ....Free PDF version - Online Business Today email: obt.pdf@hpp.com OBC / Online Business Consultant, $595/year email: obc@hpp.com